Japan Socialist Party

Former JSP Head Office in Nagatacho, the Social & Cultural Center (社会文化会館)

Socialist and social-democratic parties have been active in Japan under various names since the early 20th century, often suffering harsh government repression as well as ideological dissensions and splits. The party was originally known as the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ) in English and was formed in 1945 following the fall of the militarist regime that had led Japan into World War II. At the time, there was serious conflict inside the party between factions of the right and the left and the party's official name in English became the Japanese Socialist Party (JSP) as the left-wing had advocated. The right had wanted to use the older SDPJ.

The party became the largest political party in the first general election under the Constitution of Japan in 1947 (143 of 466 seats) and a government was formed by Tetsu Katayama, forming a coalition with the Democratic Party and the Citizens' Cooperation Party. Katayama's coalition fell in February of 1948, in large part due to inexperience and subsequent poor performance in leading government.[7] Hitoshi Ashida succeeded Katayama as prime minister of a new coalition with the Democrats. In October of 1948, just seven months after taking office, Ashida resigned due to his alleged involvement in the Showa Kendo corruption scandal. In 1958, however, he was acquitted of all charges.[8] The confusion and disarray caused by the corruption scandal were part of what allowed Shigeru Yoshida and the Liberal Party to return to government.

In the period following the end of World War II, the Socialists played a key role in the drafting of the new Japanese constitution, adding progressive articles related to issues such as health, welfare and working conditions.[9] Unfortunately for the JSP and the broader Japanese left in the immediate postwar era, their time in power coincided with a change in US policy towards Japan commonly known as the Reverse Course.[10] Beginning around 1947, and intensifying with the victory of the communists over the nationalists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the US occupation government headed by Douglas MacArthur felt the need to revise its previously conciliatory stance towards the kinds of policies pursued by Japanese leftists, from the breakup of the country’s business conglomerates, to land reform, to the ousting of nationalist figures in government.[11] Apart from reversing early steps taken towards implementing these policies, the US occupation government oversaw and assisted in the purging of almost 30,000 workers deemed to be "red" between 1948 and 1950, frustrating leftist attempts to hold on to state power.[12]

The JSP was split in 1950–1951 into the Rightist Socialist Party, consisting of socialists who leaned more to the political centre; and the Leftist Socialist Party, formed by hardline left-wingers and socialists.[13] The faction farthest to the left formed a small independent party, the Workers and Farmers Party, espousing Maoism from 1948 to 1957. The two socialist parties were merged in 1955 and joined the Socialist International that year.[14]

The new opposition party had its own factions, although organised according to left-right ideological beliefs rather than what it called the feudal personalism of the conservative parties. In the 1958 Japanese general election, the party gained 32.9 percent of the popular vote and 166 out of 467 seats. This was enough result to block the attempt of constitutional amendment by the Kishi Nobusuke-led government. However, the party was again split in 1960 because of internal disagreement over how to conduct the ongoing Anpo protests against revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty (known as Anpo in Japanese), and whether or not to cooperate with the Communist Party of Japan in doing so. On January 24, 1960, the right-most wing of the party led by Suehiro Nishio (a part of the old Right Socialist Party of Japan), broke away to form the Democratic Socialist Party, leaving the JSP slightly weakened.[15] A further blow came in the fall of 1960 when the energetic JSP party chairmain Inejiro Asanuma was assassinated by a right-wing youth during a televised election debate.[16] After that, the party's percentage of the popular vote and number of seats gradually declined.[17] However, the party performed well on a local level and by the 1970s many areas were run by SDPJ mayors and governors (including those who were endorsed by the SDPJ), who introduced new social programmes.[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]

In 1977, some members, led by Saburō Eda (江田三郎) and Hideo Den (田英夫) respectively, left the JSP, and a minor party called Socialist Democratic Federation (社会民主連合) were formed by them in 1978.[27][28]

In the double 1986 Japanese general election of July for both National Diet houses, incduging the 1986 Japanese House of Councillors election, the party suffered a rout by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) under Yasuhiro Nakasone and its seats in the lower house fell from 112 to an all-time low of eighty-five and its share of the vote from 19.5 percent to 17.2 percent. Nonetheless, its popular chairwoman Takako Doi led it to an impressive showing in the 1990 Japanese general election, with 136 seats and 24.4 percent of the vote. Some electoral districts had more than one successful socialist candidate. Doi's decision to put up more than one candidate for each of the 130 districts represented a controversial break with the past because unlike their LDP counterparts many party candidates did not want to run against each other. However, the great majority of the 149 socialist candidates who ran were successful, including seven of eight women.

Doi, a university professor of constitutional law before entering politics, had a tough, straight-talking manner that appealed to voters tired of the evasiveness of other politicians. Many women found her a refreshing alternative to submissive female stereotypes and in the late 1980s the public at large in opinion polls voted her their favorite politician (the runner-up in these surveys was equally tough-talking conservative LDP member Shintarō Ishihara). However, Doi's popularity was of limited aid to the party. The powerful Shakaishugi Kyokai (Japan Socialist Association) which was supported by a hardcore contingent of the party's 76,000-strong membership remained committed to doctrinaire Marxism, impeding Doi's efforts to promote what she called perestroika and a more moderate program with greater voter appeal. In 1983, Doi's predecessor as chairman Masashi Ishibashi began the delicate process of moving the party away from its strong opposition to the Self-Defense Forces. While maintaining that these forces were unconstitutional in light of Article 9, he claimed that because they had been established through legal procedures, they had a legitimate status (this phrasing was changed a year later to say that the Self-Defense Forces exist legally). Ishibashi also broke past precedent by visiting Washington to talk with United States political leaders.

By the end of the decade, the party had accepted the Self-Defense Forces and the 1960 Japan–United States Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. It advocated strict limitations on military spending (no more than 1 percent of GNP annually), a suspension of joint military exercises with United States forces and a reaffirmation of the three non-nuclear principles (no production, possession, or introduction of nuclear weapons into Japanese territory). Doi expressed support for balanced ties with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). In the past, the party had favored the Kim Il-sung regime in Pyongyang and in the early 1990s it still refused to recognize the normalization of relations between Tokyo and Seoul with Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea (1965). In domestic policy, the party demanded the continued protection of agriculture and small business in the face of foreign pressure, abolition of the consumption tax and an end to the construction and use of nuclear power reactors. As a symbolic gesture to reflect its new moderation, the party dropped its commitment to socialist revolution at its April 1990 convention and described its goal as social democracy,[29] the creation of a society in which "all people fairly enjoy the fruits of technological advancement and modern civilization and receive the benefits of social welfare". Delegates also elected Doi to a third term as party chairwoman.

Because of the party's self-definition as a class-based party and its symbiotic relationship with the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sōhyō), the public-sector workers' confederation, few efforts were made to attract non-union constituencies. Although some Sōhyō unions supported the Japanese Communist Party, the party remained the representative of Sohyo's political interests until the merger with private-sector unions and the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengō) in 1989. Because of declining union financial support during the 1980s, some party Diet members turned to dubious fund-raising methods. One was involved in the Recruit affair. Like other parties, it sold large blocks of fund-raising party tickets and the LDP even gave individual party Diet members funds from time to time to persuade them to cooperate in passing difficult legislation.

The party acquired seventy seats (down from 137) in the 1993 Japanese general election while the LDP lost its majority in the lower house for the first time since the 1983 Japanese general election and was out of government for the first time in 38 years. The anti-LDP coalition government of Morihiro Hosokawa was formed by reformists who had triggered the 1993 election by leaving the LDP (Japan Renewal Party and New Party Sakigake), a liberal party formed only a year before (Japan New Party), the traditional centre-left opposition (Kōmeitō, Democratic Socialist Party and Socialist Democratic Federation) and the Democratic Reform Party, the political arm of the Rengō trade union federation, together with the JSP. In 1994, the JSP and the New Sakigake Party decided to leave the non-LDP coalition. The minority Hata cabinet lasted only a few weeks.

The JSP then formed a grand coalition (dai-renritsu) government with the LDP and the New Party Sakigake under Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, leader of the party from 1993 to 1996. Most of the other parties from the anti-LDP coalition forced back into opposition, united to form the New Frontier Party (NFP) and overtaking the JSP as second largest political party in Japan. The JSP lost in the 1995 Japanese House of Councillors election.

In January 1996, the New Socialist Party of Japan split off, Murayama resigned as Prime Minister and the JSP changed its name from the JSP to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as an interim party for forming a new party.

An illustration of the history of JSP